The German language does it best – giving us single words that can be translated only into longish English sentences. Take sturmfrei, for instance. Literally “storm free’, it means something like “When your parents are away, and you have the whole house to yourself.” Or, a personal favourite, Backpfeifengesicht, which means, “A face that begs to be slapped.” Such useful words to work into a conversation.
Then there’s pantoffelheld, literally a “slipper hero”, for “ a man who may act tough in front of his friends but can’t stand up for himself against his wife.” It describes to a ‘T’ some of my former newspaper bosses.
At the recent release of Shelf Aware by V.R. Ferose, technocrat and book collector, we discovered we each had many books we hadn’t read yet. This is not unusual. Most people who care for books and have a few at home have a percentage that is permanently unread – not the same books, but roughly the same percentage.
